It\’s Getting Hot In Here

I want to preface this post by saying I share the optimism presented in many posts on itsgettinghot by the Obama administration’s behavior and decisions in the First 100 Days. There are many tools available to the President to make change immediately, from budget proposals to executive rulemaking, and he and his administrative appointees are rapidly restoring the role of science and technical expertise to the EPA, among other achievements.

However, for the United States to begin bringing our emissions down to get in line with the recommendations of James Hansen and 350, or demonstrate real leadership going into the Copenhagen climate negotiations, our attention needs to be focused on certain members of Congress, and especially the Senate. I bring this up in reference to an article that in its essentials has little to do with climate change, but whose implications are enormous. The article is a reflection on Senate Democrats by Jonathan Chait in the April 15 issue of The New Republic.

Chait’s main point is that Democrats are failing to fall in line in support of Obama’s policy agenda, even more so than Republicans failed to get in line with Bush’s, even at his lowest popularity (which got down to the thirties). During the President’s First 100 Days, House and Senate Dems have been responsible for a reduction of 1 million projected new jobs created by the stimulus, elimination of a budget proposal that would have limited subsidies to farmers grossing over 500,000 per year, limiting tax deductions for the rich, or saving the taxpayers 4 billion annually by ending guaranteed loans in favor of direct loans to pay for college. He points out that difference of opinion among members of the same party, while certainly desirable for policy development and debate, can become a hindrance when major policy goals are sacrificed on the altar of party incoherence and “Senate dysfunction.”    Continue reading ‘How Senate Democrats Will Determine Our Future’

Guest blogger- Kate Rooth, Greenpeace USA

On President Obama’s 100th day in office, presentations to Congress, EPAand CEQ highlight coal injustices and alternatives.

To celebrate the 100th day of the new presidency, six grassroots delegates from communities disadvantaged by coal mining, processing, and burning testified in front of representatives of Congress, the EPA, and CEQ to tell their personal stories of how coal impacts their daily lives.

The delegates represent tens of thousands of citizens, who, since January 21st have organized over 300 actions in fifty states as part of a project called Power Past Coal. They are demanding a swift, just transition away from coal, beginning with a moratorium on new coal plants, an end to dangerous and destructive mining practices, and a reinvestment in the communities impacted by coal with green jobs and clean energy development.

As Jeff Biggers wrote in his Huffington Post blog on these events, “if Washington, DC doesn’t have time to journey to the coalfield neighborhoods and toxic corridors of coal-fired plants, then the coalfield neighbors and coal-fired plant residents have journeyed to Washington, DC to bring a bit of truth and clarity to the clean energy debate.” Continue reading ‘Grassroots Activists Demand Power Past Coal from Nations Top Leaders’

Breaking: Ken Lewis Ousted as Chairman of the BofA Board, Remains CEO

Another Charlotte-based corporation is feeling the heat today as labor and environmental activists rallied outside Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting just a week after hundreds marched against Duke Energy’s new coal plant in Cliffside NC resulting in 43 arrests.

Environmental activists showed up to draw the connections between Bank of America and the build out of new coal fired power plants (including Duke’s Cliffside plant).

Protest pictures here

Activists from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rallied as part of an ongoing “Fire Ken Lewis” campaign. Clergy, former Bank of America employees and union leaders called up the shareholders to end Lewis’ tenure as Chairman and CEO of the struggling bank. Continue reading ‘Blue-Green Alliance Rallies to Oust BofA CEO Ken Lewis’

100 days ago, President Barack Obama took the oath of office with an overwhelming mandate from America’s youth. Two out of every three citizens under the age of 30 voted for Obama in the 2008 election. We demanded change and Obama promised it. We demanded green jobs, strong climate policy, a safer and more prosperous future, and we came 12,000 strong to DC to make sure he and his administration heard us.

The demand to get involved building a greener, more sustainable future is there, but the supply of opportunities has not been. Over the last eight years, we’ve missed countless chances to invest in a clean energy economy, in science and engineering, and in green jobs for America’s youth. But things have begun to change. There are at least three major signs of progress to report on this front in just the first 100 days of President Obama’s administration:

1. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which will create millions of new jobs and fund programs like the recently launched Youth Conservation Corps that will put 15,000 young people to work “resurrecting the treasures of America”
2. The creation of a Clean Energy Service Corps as part of the Serve America Act that will engage tens of thousands of youth in moving America towards energy independence
3. A new national energy education initiative announced yesterday that will inspire and train young Americans “to tackle the single most important challenge of their generation — the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.” Among it’s many aims, this  initiative will:

• Invest $777 million in 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers to address the fundamental scientific roadblocks to clean energy and energy security
• Establish a $5 billion “Race To The Top” fund to encourage states to improve the quality and supply of math and science teachers
• Launch RE-ENERGYSE (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge) to empower young men and women to invent and commercialize advanced energy technologies

These are huge accomplishments. The supply is beginning to meet demand, but we still have a long way to go. There remains tremendous untapped desire among young people for green jobs and green opportunities – see a recent LA Times article on the surging demand for clean energy careers or Bob Herbert’s powerful op-ed last June about the 4 million “disconnected youth,” 16 to 24, “who are not in school and basically have no hope of finding work”.

President Obama knows that “energy is this generation’s great project” and as long as there is demand for more jobs researching geothermal technology, installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, and conserving our natural resources, we need to increase the supply of opportunities.

There is no “silver bullet.” As Bill McKibben likes to say, we need “silver buckshot”. We need to marshall all the human potential in this great country to address these challenges. I applaud President Obama on an extremely successful 100 days, but I ask for more. The young people of America are ready and willing to serve. Let’s give them the opportunity.

originally posted at ReEnergizeTexas.org

“This feels like one of the good old campaigns,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, Executive Director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, Saturday afternoon.  Activists had swarmed Congressman Charlie Gonzalez’s carriage in the King William Parade earlier that morning in San Antonio.

Smitty may have been showing his age a bit (he’s directed Public Citizen’s Texas office for the last 25 years, and become a local legend in the process), but the sentiments were positive among organizers young and old alike.

Congressman Charlie Gonzalez is the key swing vote on a subcommittee considering the Waxman-Markey bill. A conservative Democrat, Gonzalez has joined a misguided throng calling for CO2 credits to be given away, a solution deemed unacceptable by environmentalists and economists who point out that such a system would create unfair profits for polluters and cripple any attempt at real CO2 reductions.

Learning late Thursday that Congressman Gonzalez would be in the King William Parade, a Fiesta celebration for the well-to-do and well-connected King William neighborhood of San Antonio, activists at Public Citizen, SEED Coalition, and my group, the ReEnergize Texas student coalition, got together and planned a full scale outreach and publicity action to let the Congressman know that giveaways are unacceptable.
Continue reading ‘Sorry Charlie, Giveaways Aren’t Green’

This article is crossposted on the CCAN Blog

This morning the Chesapeake Climate Action Network successfully caught the attention of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe at a rally he hosted at the 17th Street Farmer’s Market in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond Town Councilman Marty Jewel kicked off the morning, and former President Bill Clinton introduced Mr. McAuliffe. The theme of the rally was “New Energy for New Jobs,” and the candidate’s speech centered repowering the commonwealth and creating new jobs for Virginians. CCAN wanted to ask Mr. McAuliffe about his position on a recently proposed coal fired power plant for Surry County, a Hampton Roads community. Well, we got his attention!

Continue reading ‘Is a Coal Plant in Surry County a Bad Idea? CCAN Asks Terry McAuliffe’

By Teryn Norris & Jesse Jenkins

Today, President Obama announced a new national energy education initiative to inspire and train tens of thousands of young Americans “to tackle the single most important challenge of their generation — the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.”

Last summer, we developed a proposal for a National Energy Education Act (NEEA) to launch a major new federal initiative supporting clean energy-related education, in collaboration with our Breakthrough Generation Fellows. We published the proposal in two newspaper op-eds, including the SF Chronicle and Baltimore Sun, and it was later featured in Mother Jones magazine, congressional testimony, and online interview. We also submitted a fact sheet and strategy brief to the Obama campaign and called upon young people to advocate for NEEA.

President Obama’s new energy education initiative, announced today at the National Academy of Sciences, takes a very similar approach.  As he declared today:

“There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation’s challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels… But energy is our great project, this generation’s great project… the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy. It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge… And it will support fellowships and interdisciplinary graduate programs and partnerships between academic institutions and innovative companies to prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge.”

This new initiative is a big step in the right direction, and we applaud President Obama and his administration for their commitment to inspiring and training the next generation of clean energy innovators. As we wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle last July:

“It is imperative that we transform our nation’s universities, colleges and vocational schools into multidisciplinary hubs of clean energy innovation… Today, a National Energy Education Act would equip a new generation of Americans with the highest-caliber human capital, inspire them to tackle energy as their generational undertaking, and pave the way for new industries and technologies that will drive the U.S. economy for decades to come.”

Continue reading ‘Obama Launches Energy Education Initiative’

Remember last December when Bush forced through an 11th hour rule change to the Stream Buffer Zone (SBZ)?  Basically, this made it even easier to dump waste from mountaintop removal mines into streams. 

Well, today Sec. Salazar announced that they would attempt to vacate the rule change on the grounds that it wasn’t legal. Which is good. 

Salazar also mentioned that the original 1983 SBZ rule would continue to be enforced as it has been in the past – meaning it will not be enforced at all.  Which is bad.  Remember that over 2,000 miles of streams were destroyed under the current enforcement of the stream buffer zone rule. 

Granted, the Bush rule change would have been worse – but Salazar’s vacating of the rule change doesn’t make anything better.  A complete lack of oversight from state and federal agencies has allowed outlaw mining companies to blast central Appalachia to pieces.  Unless the adminstration comes out in favor of strict enforcement of the law, this destruction will continue.

Thus, according to Salazar’s statements today citizens are looking at more of the same destruction — which includes over 100 pending mountaintop removal permits that would destroy hundreds of miles of mountain streams and the nearby communities that depend on them.  This announcement has left citizen groups with hundreds of questions about what the decision means for existing mines, pending permits and recent EPA actions. 

Hopefully the Obama administration will make a swift and transparent decision to end mountaintop removal and valley fills — and then enforce the law– because we can’t afford to lose  one more mountain.

According to the history books, the United States is no stranger to economic turmoil. One only has to flip back to the twentieth century to find the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as president during the worst financial crisis America had ever seen. By early 1933, the U.S. economy had sunk to its lowest point known as the Great Depression. More than 13 million Americans were unemployed while wages dropped to 60 percent of their previous value. Furthermore, business losses suffered a record high of $6 Billion while primary industries were operating at half their capacity.

Due to the stagnation of the economy, the American people could not receive bank loans and mortgages. These tragic conditions caused thousands of homes to be foreclosed. Thus, the American people began to lose faith in the American system of democracy itself. However, even in such a trying point, some progressives persisted with optimism. Continue reading ‘The New Green President And His New Green Deal’

Early this morning, 7 activists from Greenpeace climbed a construction crane high above the State Department in Washington DC, to deploy a giant banner stating: “TOO BIG TO FAIL: Stop Global Warming – Rescue the Climate”.

The action unfolded just before leaders from the worlds most polluting countries gathered for the Major Economies Forum at the State Department. While the MEF was started by Bush to undermine the Kyoto process, Obama recently announced a continuation of the meeting – recognizing the need for the world’s major economies to address climate change in the lead-up to Copenhagen. Hillary Clinton was addressing the crowd at the State Department, while Obama himself was speaking next door at the National Academy of Sciences.

The climbers and the banner were up for several hours, in full view of  Hillary and Obama’s motorcades, thousands of DC residents, the international delegates to the meeting, and international press. Already, the action has been covered in the Washington Post, CNN, the Guardian UK, Wall Street Journal. and Associated Press

And of course, this action builds on the growing momentum of the global climate justice movement, including the recent events such as the thousands risking arrest at the Capitol Climate Action in March, to  Cliffside in North Carolina last week, to the waves of actions trying to save Coal River Mountain, to the mass mobilzations at the UK climate camp. Our movement is growing, our actions are escalating – and together, we will fight for climate justice!

Continue reading ‘Seven arrested hanging banner at Major Economies meeting in DC’